


ergo propter hoc

by mortifyingideal



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale has Answers (but no clipboard), Billy Joel’s “Leave A Tender Moment Alone”, But Instead it’s “Leave a Funny Concept Alone”, Crowley has Questions (and a clipboard), First Meeting (no not that one), Garden of Eden, Lots of Firsts (no not those kind), M/M, idiots to lovers, ‘Twas Curiosity Felled the Snake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 04:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20419823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortifyingideal/pseuds/mortifyingideal
Summary: The survey had been Crawly’s idea. While he hadn’t originally planned on coming topside so soon in his demonic career, he really hadn’t trusted any of the others to get this one right. Neither had Lucifer, apparently, because according to Beelzebub (who passed the idea along, endlessly suited to being a middle-man despite not being a man of any description) it was Crawly’s job and Crawly’s job alone.Get up there and find whoever’s causing trouble.





	ergo propter hoc

“Question.”

The angel jumped at the sudden sound, right hand snapped to his side as though reaching for— _ah_, thought Crawly. Perhaps sneaking up on a Principality with a flaming sword was not his finest idea, even if seeing him startle had been worth it just a little. The demon didn’t give him time to recover or fully manifest his weapon and instead turned on the charm as he held up his clipboard.

“Hi! Sorry to bother you when you’re so busy, uh, guarding the perimeter and whatnot. Seems a very worthwhile task, very noble, keeping watch. Don’t want to take up too much of your time, just got a quick survey for you to take part in, a few questions that need answering, then I’ll be out of your hair.”

The survey had been Crawly’s idea. While he hadn’t originally planned on coming topside so soon in his demonic career, he really hadn’t trusted any of the others to get this one right. Neither had Lucifer, apparently, because according to Beelzebub (who passed the idea along, endlessly suited to being a middle-man despite not being a man of any description) it was Crawly’s job and Crawly’s job alone.

_Get up there and find whoever’s causing trouble. _

They’d sent so many demons to the Garden in animal guise for a touch of recon, only to have every one of them reappear without fail in Hell’s check-in lounge not five minutes later, wailing and screaming about the vengeful angels that had taken an almost sadistic pleasure in dispatching their mortal forms. Hastur had even had a go, warts and all. Got as far as whispering into the slumbering ear of the newly-minted woman before he swore to all who would listen the Archangel Gabriel himself appeared to have more than a few stern words and return him back from whence he came most violently. The sordid affair landed him a Duchy which Crawly still felt was a little undeserved— the guy had only given her a few nightmares, nothing to write home about with or without Gabriel’s involvement. The Garden seemed to be crawling with the heavenly host and they sounded about as friendly as Crawly remembered. Each demon who returned regaled their peers with increasingly gruesome and elaborate tales of the imposing angels who patrolled the lush landscape within the walls of paradise.

“Why don’t we just find out what creature one of them likes best?” Crawly had asked one day, to no-one in particular. He was used to not getting answers these days, realised his folly in believing Hell would give him more than Heaven had, but still found himself brimming with endless questions. “Wouldn’t that solve it? If you’re a being of love, and you love puppies, you’re hardly going to go around jabbing them with a big pointy smiting stick are you? Even if they do have a bit of brimstone dander.”

So, with nothing left for Hell to lose in trying out a frankly ridiculous idea, up top he had gone. Whipped himself up a clipboard with nothing on it but a blank piece of paper he’d nicked from Dagon’s desk, a ballpoint pen with a clicker and a silent prayer to whoever might be listening that he wasn’t about to get plunged back down into the check-in lounge. That place made Purgatory look like Eden Mark II.

“You’re a demon.” the angel said, bringing Crawly back to the moment, hand not having left his side.

“I am, very astute of you to notice, and you’ll also notice I’ve not actually trespassed into the Garden. We know your lot aren’t too keen on that. I’m on the wall, firmly on the wall, quite close to the edge in fact. We’re very high up, aren’t we?” Crawly peered over said edge to the desert below, nearly giving himself the first instance of vertigo. He would, in a short time, be responsible for a lot of firsts, a notion which really _would_ have given him vertigo.

“It’s not like you need to worry about falling.”

Crawly’s gaze shot back round to the angel because _surely_ he hadn’t been making such a divinely tasteless joke? Angels were cruel but generally lacked the ability to be funny about it. He was at least pleased to see the angel’s hand had stopped hovering over where the hilt of his sword would be as he gestured to Crawly’s wings.

“I’m assuming those still work,” the angel smiled. Crawly mirrored his expression and decided that no, that hadn’t been a witty barb at his graceless expense, this one was just a bit dim. From here, Crawly could sense that he and the angel were the only firmament-based life forms in the proximity. No more Archangels, no more big smiting sticks. Just a daft Principality with a deadly weapon sheathed in a pocket dimension who hadn’t even pulled it on him after being snuck-upon. The plan would work. His plan was going to work.

“Me, worried? Nah. Just admiring the view. So! Shall we get on with it?”

“I don’t believe I’ve agreed to take part in any sort of survey, so sorry.”

The angel had just apologised to him, a _demon_. This was absolutely going to work.

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“You haven’t even told me what the survey is about,” the angel stressed, eyes narrowed at the back of Crawly’s clipboard.

“Oh, just a sort of general survey. About God’s new creations, design schematics, et cetera,” he said.

The angel wrinkled his nose, “I’m not really involved in the design process, and even if I were I certainly wouldn’t be revealing those secrets. Least of all to _you_.”

Crawly didn’t need the angel to tell him that. The type of angel Crawly had been had possessed the creative panache to be involved in the initial ‘design process’, and the unimposing specimen stood before him was about as far removed from who Crawly had been as you could get.

“We’re not trying to copy your celestial homework, angel. Just curious. We’ve all answered the survey downstairs, seems unfair to not get a different point of view on the subject. For balance. Wouldn’t you agree?”

He clicked the pen several times in quick succession while waiting for an answer and thought_ oh, that’s annoying, must remember that for later_. The angel clearly felt the same, so definitely worth putting a pin in that one (even if he had the nagging suspicion it would be a long while before he got to make good on the idea).

“I am sorry,” the angel said, and for the second time that day Crawly found himself delighted at being apologised to by an angel, “but I still fail to see why you’re asking _me_.”

“Well, you’re important, aren’t you?” Crawly couldn’t help but notice how the angel had couched all his questions so far as statements. _Cleverer than he lets on_.

“Oh, hardly.”

“Don’t be so modest, look at you! Picture of angelic importance. Pristine white robes, mop of blond curls, very well kept wings and don’t think I can’t see that sword you’ve got tucked away in the ether. They don't give those to just_ anyone_, you know.”

The angel preened. It was minute, and gone in a flash, but Crawly had seen. Had felt an uninhibited and frankly dangerous urge to make it happen again._ Get on with it, you stupid tit, get on with it and get out of there. No time for temptation, his _or _yours_.

“So, the survey...”

“Hm? Oh! Yes, of course. Very well, I shall answer your questions to the best of my ability, but the first sign of any funny business and I warn you that I may have to take drastic action.”

Crawly refrained from pointing out that his very presence on the wall constituted ‘funny business’, but only because he didn’t want to find out what constituted ‘drastic action’.

“Much obliged. Alright, let’s see here. Question one: which of the Garden’s new inhabitants do you find most repulsive?”

“Repulsive!”

“I’m just reading what’s written on the sheet,” Crawly had backed up several feet at the angel’s tone, which had an almost hysterical edge of divine wrath about it.

“Repulsive indeed! None of God’s creatures are repulsive, the very idea— the nerve!” he sniffed, and it may have seemed hopeless to the untrained eye, but Crawly’s eyes were not untrained. They were predator’s eyes and they knew what it looked like when hesitation could turn into confession, trapped in the moment between giving it all up or denying everything. He saw the hidden something in the corner of the angel’s mouth and waited, patiently, for his silence to draw it out.

“.... however.”

_Bingo. _

“However if, for the sake of argument, of course, just as a hypothetical—” here, he looked to Crawly, as though asking permission from the demon to play Devil’s Advocate.

“Yes, yes, hypothetically speaking.”

“—_hypothetically_, if one were to choose, one might choose wasps.”

Crawly balked. Tried to think if any of his lot had ended up with the yellow jacket look. He came up blank, which was a bit of a shock. Wasps were absolutely pointless bastards, seemed like Hell should be swarming with them but apparently even the eternally damned drew the line somewhere.

“Right, yes, nasty things. Think Someone was in a particularly foul mood when They came up with those buggers, eh?” He said, and got nothing more than a little hum that could have meant anything in return (the jury was still out on which side could claim the origins of plausible deniability). He scribbled a few nondescript shapes on the clipboard, keeping up the pretence that there was actually a survey present and he wasn’t just pulling this out of his arse.

“Question two, then. Think you’ll like this one better, seems more your speed. Of all of the new creations in Eden, which would the Principality, er, You There, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, be least likely to smite on sight?”

“That seems awfully specific,” the angel said.

“Er,” replied the demon.

“I thought you said this was a general survey about the Almighty’s designs.”

“I—”

“Are you attempting to find out what my favourite animal is?”

Crawly chewed the top of his pen, aware he only had a second or two to decide how to proceed after such a blatant error. He’d let his guard down and taken the angel for a fool, which might end up costing him. He needed to stall.

“Well, I can hardly go around putting it that way, can I? Wouldn’t be very demonic of me.”

“What on earth do you want to know that for?” the angel asked, and the momentary victory at having him question something—_two somethings!_—was ruined as he noticed him trying to peer at the clipboard which was, of course, blank except for the crude doodles Crawly had made of some wasps.

He snatched it away from the angel’s line of sight, then poofed it into nothingness just to be safe, “Okay, okay, you caught me. The survey was a front, you’ve rumbled my scheme good and proper. We—down there, that is—we’re all just a bit scared, to be honest. A lot of the lads want to come and have a peek at all this, very new and exciting yadda yadda, but know that there’s every chance they’re gonna—” he drew a line across his throat and made a gagging sound that caused the angel to wince, “—so they forced me up here to throw myself at your angelic mercy and find out if there’s anything we can do to make ourselves more appea— uh, less likely to get discorporated for our troubles, now that the others have buggered off and it’s just you left.”

The angel looked at him blankly for a very long time. Crawly fought down his ever-present need to fidget.

“The others?” the angel finally asked. Crawly allowed himself to relax and started pacing around him in a circle, nodding emphatically.

“Seem a bit more fond of smiting than you. Anyone who managed to make it into the Garden came back down with all sorts of reports of the awesome, terrifying Guardians that bumped them off. Sounds like Archangel work for my money, but it looks like it’s just you here now, eh? Suppose they don’t need all the gates guarded anymore.”

If Crawly hadn’t been so busy figuring out his next move after the slight left turn his infernal icebreaker had taken, he’d have seen the angel’s amused look. If he had seen that he might have decided to take a closer look at the wall they were standing on and noticed the distinct lack of, well, gates. Or even just gate, _singular_.

“Ah, yes, silly me. The others who were certainly here before, guarding Eden with me. Those others. Yes, all the scary ones gone now— only me left! Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, as you said. So, let me make sure I’ve got this crystal clear. Demons— _demons _want me to, to, to choose an animal form that_ I _would like in order to be allowed to visit the Garden? With, according to you, _absolutely _no ulterior motive? Just for a quick jaunt in Paradise as a beast of my choosing so that I don’t smite them off the face of the earth? I didn’t even know you could change your beastly forms in such a manner.”

They couldn’t. As God created so too did the Morningstar. Every demon that had once been an angel found themselves remade with a grotesque mirrored form of earth’s newest inhabitants. You didn’t get to say no, and you didn’t get to choose what animal you got stuck with any more than Crawly chose to Fall. He did not, of course, relay any of this to the one angel who seemed to have not gotten the memo on that particular demonic quirk. Besides, it wasn’t like every Tom, Dick and Hastur needed a pass to the Garden. Just one, Crawly thought as he continued to leisurely bob and weave around the Principality in an endless loop, waiting again to draw out his answer. One unlucky bastard who would be in prime position to slip past the angel and—

“Snakes.”

Crawly stopped moving. He blinked. It wasn’t something he made a habit of, but the moment seemed to call for it. He tried to remember if he’d ever blinked out of shock before now, and found he did it again when he realised he hadn’t. Without letting himself think about how it might be showing his hand to do so he touched his curls, made sure they hadn’t fallen away from the sides of his face, that they still covered his mark. Not a strand out of place, and in his overwhelming relief he had entirely forgotten about his eyes (and would not remember).

“Sorry, sorry, can you just—must’ve drifted off for a second, I— what?” he said, eloquently and not at all ending up several octaves higher than his usual pitch.

“I like snakes,” the angel reaffirmed Crawly’s worst fears. “They’re absolutely _darling_, have you ever seen one?”

“I, uh. Snakes?”

“Oh, yes, beautiful creatures. Long and lithe, the variety in scale pattern alone is enough to make them_ fascinating _and that’s before we’ve even begun to talk about behavioural patterns—“ he stopped himself, having cottoned on to the first panic attack in earth’s history as it happened in front of him.

“I say, are you alright?”

Crawly was definitely not alright. _He _was the unlucky bastard. He realised he was going to be the one, the _only one_, who could carry out Lucifer’s current plans on Earth. The angel had essentially handed him a death sentence— if he didn’t get this right, if he didn’t _succeed_, it was not worth thinking about. He briefly entertained the idea of lying, claiming the angel had named any other blessed creature, but if he got caught lying and accused of being a traitor? Worse than death. This was suddenly all very much above his pay grade. Crawly knew he didn’t actually want to be responsible for original sin (whatever that was going to be), he didn’t want to be infamous for all eternity; he only wanted to do a good enough job at getting them to the finish line so that, after it was all over, he could say from his comfortable corner office “oh, yeah, had a hand in planning that one” and then he would ride the robe hem of that success into whatever was going to qualify for demonic retirement.

The angel was still looking at him with something that, on any other creature that had not just _royally fucked him over_, he might have mistaken for concern. Crawly attempted to pull himself together, to get back control of the situation. He could still get out of this. He put on his best suggestive voice, or at least the best impression of it that he could manage while in this state.

“You’re sure you wouldn’t prefer something else? _Anything_ else? An aardvark? Lovely creatures, aardvarks. Or a giraffe! Graceful, in their own way.”

The angel smirked. Crawly didn’t mistake the expression that time and knew with a familiar plummeting sensation that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

“I’m quite sure. I couldn’t possibly allow any other demonic entity to pass through. Snakes are just so… what is the word that I’m looking for? Ah, yes. _Entertaining_. Now— is that the end of your survey? I must admit that the others might be back any minute and may not be so welcoming as I. So, if you wouldn’t mind…?”

The problem with being constantly paranoid, Crawly mused as he took the hint and sank back into the depths of Hell with a mixture of dread and relief that he could report this one a success, was that sometimes you were justified in your paranoia but most of the time you were just plain paranoid. He had a feeling he might, just _possibly_, have been had by an angel with a mouthful of a name and a surprisingly wicked curve to his smirk. Or he was just doing what most demons did best and seeing the worst in everyone (a skill Crawly would come to realise too late that he did not actually possess).

Two weeks later, it rained for the first time.

* * *

“Question.”

Aziraphale deigned to give him the barest flick of his chin as a go-ahead, but his eyes did not leave the parchment in front of him that he was handling with those white gloves that were frankly pointless on a creature that could just will away all the usual human detritus that came with having hands and skin. Crowley was sick of asking him about that particular affectation— knew he’d never get a proper answer, much like the reading glasses. Other queries produced much more fun results.

“Were you _flirting_ with me, that day on the wall?”

The angel looked up properly at that, expression carefully (suspiciously) schooled blank.

“I hardly think sheltering a new acquaintance from some rainfall counts as—“

“No, no. No, angel, not then. The other time. With the—” he gesticulated in lieu of finishing his sentence. Crowley hadn’t meant to start a serious line of questioning - though he was pleased that Aziraphale had clearly thought about it enough to not ask such an inane question as _which wall?_ He’d only wanted to get Aziraphale’s attention off that blasted scroll and onto him, tease him a bit about what did or did not constitute flirting and be teased in return about how appropriate it may or may not have been to insinuate an angel capable of such actions, but now it seemed he’d unwittingly plunged himself into a Conversation.

“Oh! You mean your ridiculous attempt to get the forces of Hell past the foolish, bumbling Principality left all by himself guarding the walls of Eden by asking him what animal he likes best? _That _time?”

Crowley wished he could still seethe when Aziraphale did things like this. He tried very, _very_ hard to seethe but all that came out was something of a delighted grin.

“Worked, didn’t it?”

“Like a charm, my dear.”

The reply was too self-satisfied by half and something Crowley had suspected all these years clicked into place like the first toppling domino in one of those incredibly complicated performance pieces. The rest of the tiles fell in a cacophonous thunder inside his head and Crowley suddenly knew what the picture they revealed would be.

“You _knew_,” Crowley said. “You knew what I was there for, you knew _exactly_ what was going to happen! You knew I was going to be the snake!”

Aziraphale snorted softly. “Oh, really. I didn’t _know _what was going to happen. What a blasphemous notion. I’m not omniscient, nor psychic. I just had an inkling. And a memo.”

“A memo?!” Crowley was dimly aware he shouldn’t have found this all so appealing. He had terrible survival instincts— wires all crossed as it turned out. Situations involving Aziraphale that should have been alarming or frustrating flicked a different kind of switch in Crowley. Nothing to do with flight or fight, but it did begin with “f” and may have been a four letter word.

“What did it say, let me think… ‘We have it on good Authority that the Enemy will send an Adversary to vex you through your days and rend humanity from the Garden. Be Vigilant, Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of Eden, for who knows what form Evil shall choose to take’,” he paused to look over at Crowley, who gaped at him in a manner more befitting a fish than a serpent, “so I just thought it prudent, you see, to have a hand in it.”

”Sorry, a hand in… what, exactly?”

“Choosing the form of Evil, naturally. All things considered I think I made a wonderful choice, slight hiccough with the apple and successful Garden-rending aside. Could have thwarted you a little better in that regard, but you didn't seem especially _competent _as a demon when we first met so some responsibility lies with me there— let my guard quite down. I underestimated you, Crowley, and I am sorry to admit not for the last time in our acquaintance. So perhaps, to answer your original query, not so much flirting as— well._ Having you on_, as they say.”

The chair Crowley had sprawled himself in let out a groan as it took the brunt of his full shell-shocked weight. _Underestimated _didn’t cover half of what he felt, though he couldn’t find it in himself to get upset about it. He rather liked how being underestimated had shaped his life. If _either _of them had actually been competent, lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseam. After all, hadn’t he been underestimating Aziraphale in the exact same way back then? There was something in that train of thought that caught Crowley’s attention, a high pitched whistling that screeched at him he was close to having another long-standing mystery solved.

“Hang on,” Crowley shot up, and the chair made another sound of protest. “Hang on just a minute. ‘Guardian of Eden’, you said. Not ‘of the Eastern Gate’. All of bloody Eden. Were there even any other Guardians? The Archangels, the smitey ones,_ Gabriel_— did they ever actually get put on patrol? Or were all those demons lying, embarrassed at having been shuffled off the mortal coil by-” he stopped, knowing this particular line of questioning wasn’t necessary anymore. Crowley knew the truth.

“It was just you all along.”

“_Obviously_. They don’t give flaming swords to just anyone, you know.”

It was all Crowley could do to mutter a repetition of _obviously_ though it lacked the usual mocking sharpness with which he liked to imitate the angel. It might have even sounded _soft_. He was lost in thought, going back over the entire interaction again in light of Aziraphale’s admission. At some point the angel removed the gloves and had come to sit beside him, abandoning his work for the evening. He was now giving Crowley the attention he’d initially wanted with the same amused look that he had perfected all those years ago. Yes, this was definitely going to be a Conversation. Crowley steeled himself as Aziraphale turned to him and began to speak.

“Go on, I can tell you have more questions. You can’t help yourself— if I’ve learned nothing else about you, you old serpent, I’ve learned this much.”

“Why didn’t you off me on sight, then?”

“As you yourself pointed out in your introduction, you hadn’t actually done anything _wrong _at that point, attempted subterfuge aside. You hadn’t trespassed in the Garden. I didn’t go around just killing demons willy-nilly. I waited until they deserved it, and you did nothing to deserve it.”

Crowley grunted and, at length, thought about how to word this next one without giving the entire game away. He suspected he was fighting a losing battle on that front, had been doing so for much longer now than he cared to admit or acknowledge, but he was learning all sorts of new things about Aziraphale this evening. His curiosity was winning out over his self-preservation (which, to his credit, had done a bang-up job of keeping it together over the last six thousand years despite a few wobbles— Crowley decided it deserved a nice break, and spoke before he could change his mind).

“So, say I’d been— oh, I don’t know. A giraffe—”

He pointedly ignored Aziraphale’s poor attempt at hiding his laughter.

“—and not a snake. Snakes would still be your favourite, would they? You’d have answered the same? Got lumbered with a different adversary ‘to vex you through your days’?”

The angel hummed, laughter still warming the lines on his face. Crowley tried to play off how much stock he would place in the answer that was forthcoming by keeping his expression neutral and gripped with both hands the edge of the much-abused chair, hard enough to leave 8 permanent little crescent moons in the material.

“You know I really don’t think I would have. No, to all of the above.”

_Leave it at that, learn your lesson for once and leave it. Get out while you’re ahead, you stupid tit—_

“Why not?”

Aziraphale’s amusement softened. Crowley was too busy giving himself a right telling off for this error in judgement (that could hardly be called a _wobble _so much as a _great seismic bastard wave_) to notice the change in the angel’s posture. He only realised Aziraphale had leant over to him when his fingertip had already made contact with Crowley’s temple, featherlight, skirting his mark, and he used the last burst of this motion to hook his finger around the arm of his sunglasses as though that was what he had meant to do all along. _Plausible deniability_, the dying breath of Crowley’s rational thoughts offered up. Aziraphale gently prised the glasses off the bewildered demon’s face.

“I had very little in the way of free will. Still do, I’m well aware of that,” the angel looked down at where he held Crowley’s spectacles in his hands, almost reverently, the way Crowley suspected you might hold the face of a lover. “So when you came up to me and seemed like a decent sort, for a wily demon who I was potentially destined to have it out with forevermore, holding your silly little clipboard with absolutely nothing on it, and your dreadfully annoying pen, and your wonderfully expressive face, and your charmingly abysmal attempts to pull the wool over my eyes, and you literally _gave me _the opportunity to choose something for myself for the first time in my existence— you see, it didn’t matter what you were. Oh, I do genuinely like snakes! It wasn’t a lie, happy coincidence. But you do understand, don’t you? It wouldn’t have mattered one jot. Crowley, my dear. My _dearest_.”

The angel finally looked up and the demon’s uncovered eyes caught on the remnants of the hidden thing in the corner of his mouth, like they had done several thousand times since that first day together on the wall. He’d watched it wither away bit by bit over the years, but even in tatters it had still stubbornly held fast. Crowley had a feeling he was seeing it for the last time. If asked about it, he could definitively say that it would not be missed.

He reached, took the hand that had once been poised to strike him down and instead reminded him he could still fly (even if he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the brilliant, complete bastard of an angel _had _been making a joke that day). Aziraphale preened under his touch, then leaned in the rest of the way and pressed their foreheads together as he finally revealed the secret that was for Crowley, and Crowley alone.

“How could I have given any other answer but you?”

**Author's Note:**

> free will! the original sin so nice crowley accidentally inspired it twice.
> 
> listen, tell me you’re not into mutually assured soppy destruction via loveable idiocy (but aziraphale a little less so - i wanted to use the tag ‘aziraphale is a bastard man’ but thought better of it). this absolutely started out as a joke amongst friends about crowley popping up with a clipboard and aziraphale gushing about snakes to him, blissfully unaware, but well. you heard the billy joel in the tags. 
> 
> it’s been a very long time since i’ve written anything so please enjoy and if you can’t tell by now that shoebox project shaped me as a person i expect you’ll have something to say about all the italics, but let’s not make a big thing of it eh?


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